


I've lost it all I'm just a silhouette (and you caused it)

by orphan_account



Series: (unrelated) songfics [3]
Category: Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Affairs, Alcohol, Heartbreak, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, M/M, Smoking, Songfic, Suicide Attempt, Unrequited Love, admittance of feelings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 17:17:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,656
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9281876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Youth by Daughter songfic.My eyes are damp from the words you leftRinging in my head, when you broke my chestWe're setting fire to our insides for funCollecting pictures from the flood that wrecked our homeIt was a flood that wrecked this homeAnd you caused it.





	

Josh watched the light fade, he must’ve been lay in the same spot for hours but he would never have realised if it wasn’t for the movement of the sunlight, moving slowly down the empty side of the bed until it fell off the end and begin to tint the room a pale blue. Josh stared at the same spot the whole time, as though frozen in time, the only sign he was alive was the slow rise and fall of his chest. He felt empty, numb, no longer able to feel anything, he’d been lay there, silent and still and staring for hours. 

He finally moved when his phone buzzed on his bedside table. He missed the call, his movements sluggish and pathetic. He saw he had multiple texts and notifications but the worst was the 5 missed calls from Tyler. Just as he locked his phone and consigned himself to going back to staring into space it began ringing again. With a lead weight for a heart he answered it. 

“Josh.” The voice was panicked. 

“Yeah?” Josh replied hesitantly. 

“I was so worried; you didn’t answer me I got scared.” Tyler said, there was an awkwardness. “Are you-are you safe?” 

Josh only stared off into space, he didn’t have the energy for this. 

“Josh, please talk to me.”

Josh’s new hobby was going out with whatever friends would agree to come, he would go to different bars every night so that no one person would get suspicious, but he knew it was a ticking time bomb. He knew he was just counting down the days until someone noticed. 

“Josh what’s going on?” Mark was waiting for him when he staggered in drunk, Michael was there too, sat on the couch, his roommate Dustin leant in the doorway, arms folded. 

“Have you been waiting there for me this whole time?” Was what he’d tried to say, but what came out was a slurred mess. Mark gave him an exasperated sigh as he crossed the room to catch him before he could fall over the couch. He sat Josh down on the seat. 

“You’re a mess Josh what the _fuck_?” Dustin said. Moving over to where Michael and Mark were now stood. 

“Do you think we should call Tyler?” He heard them mumble and the name alone caused something in him to break. He starts crying then and the three men give him sympathetic looks. 

Before he knows it, the sky is starting to brighten again and Tyler is kneeling in front of him, a hand on his knee and he can’t bear it. He just manages to shove him off and scramble to the kitchen sink before he’s throwing up everything. Hot tears sting his eyes and his throat is on fire. He feels cold fingers brush his spine and he jumps violently, the hand retracts immediately, hurt flashing over Tyler’s face. 

“This has to stop Josh.” He sounds tired, it’s almost 5am he will be. “All the cigarettes and the drinking and the” he swallows hard, “sleeping around. You’re killing yourself.” 

Josh throws up again, but between heaves he tries to force the sobs aside to speak. “I’m s-sorry” he throws up so more, “e-everything” and again, “hurts-s.” Tyler sighs, leaning over to turn on the Fawcett and he pushes josh’s hair out of his face and guides his head under the water. 

He collapses against the sink, knuckles white as he desperately tries to stay on his feet, the tap is off now but Tyler is still watching him, he’s about to push his hair off his face again when Josh puts a hand out to stop him.

“Don’t. Don’t be nice to me, I-I can’t bear it.” Tyler stares, Josh rubs a hand over his face and on shaky legs pushes himself off the sink and walks towards his bedroom. “Go home to your fiancée Tyler.” 

He starts to lose track of time, of events, he’s still drinking and smoking and he’s slept with too many people that he doesn’t even know who they are anymore it’s all one month long blur. Sometimes they would try to make him breakfast and he’d snap that they weren’t special they weren’t anything he didn’t even remember their name, they’d usually storm out then and others would slap him, he welcomed the sting of their skin hitting his so hard sometimes it split it open just a bit. 

One time Debby called him, told him to get his shit together that this wasn’t who he was. 

“I don’t know who I am anymore.” He’d said and hung up. 

Tyler finds him on the floor of his apartment, Dustin’s already left for work. As Tyler is about to knock a half-dressed man yanks it open, he looks angry to see Tyler, muttering something about the ‘next slut in line’ but Tyler doesn’t put two and two together until he finds Josh. Sees the bruise forming on his cheek. He picks him up off the floor. 

“This is my fault.” Tyler says and Josh wants to agree but he knows he could never. Tyler tucks Josh back into bed, holds him against his chest and Josh wants to say no but he can’t, he’s too weak. He falls asleep in Tyler’s arms. 

He stops going out then. He goes to see his friend Jesse, stays with him for a few weeks, he helps him quit smoking, stop drinking. He surrounds himself with family and doesn’t look back. 

They’re on stage and Josh is alive, he feels the roar of the crowd in his chest and he doesn’t realise how much he needed to hear it. But Tyler puts his arm around him and suddenly the cold emptiness is inflating his hollow chest. 

As they pile back into the bus he can’t stop thinking about it, about Tyler’s hands on his skin, about the hotel night over a year ago. When Tyler had touched more of him, living his skin on fire. Afterwards they lay panting in the dark, Tyler muttering about it being a mistake. He’d said the same thing after the show the following day, when Josh pulled him into the dressing room toilet and sank to his knees in front of him. 

Tyler tries to check on him in his bunk, and for a second Josh knows he’s thinking about climbing in, but Josh tells him goodnight and draws the curtain. 

“Josh I never should’ve let this happen.” Tyler says, they’re in the dressing room for their last show of the tour and it seems like everything is coming to a head today. 

“Well you did, you did Tyler.” Josh shouts back. 

“I told her, she knows.” Tyler’s voice is so small, but Josh’ll be damned if he lets his heart tell him to be soft now, he will not cave right now, he owes it to himself. 

“Did you tell her all of it?” Josh pushes because he knows he can’t have. 

“She knows enough.” Josh scoffs at that. “It was a mistake I never-I wish I” Tyler can’t force the words out. 

“I love you.” Josh says pointedly. “You must know that. You have to.”   
Tyler stares at him. “I love her more.” Is all he says and Josh walks right up to his face their lips are inches apart and neither one can breathe and just when Tyler thinks he might be about to kiss him Josh speaks. 

“You’re selfish and you broke my heart an-and I” his voice breaks. “love you.” Then Josh is storming out, waiting on his side of the stage. He’s never hit his drums harder in his life, he breaks the kick drum head during tear in my heart, and Tyler knows that was meant for him, feels it like it’s his chest that’s had a hole broken through it. 

Tyler marries Jenna and he’s so happy and all Josh can do is watch and pretend like he didn’t just lose a limb, like he’s not bleeding out onto the floor. He smiles and cheers and dances with Tyler’s sister and pretends he’s fine. 

Josh is dying, he’s lay on the floor of his dressing room bathroom, he smashed his head into the mirror, there’s blood pouring from his head, bits of glass embedded in his skin, but it’s not enough, he still can’t feel anything except this emptiness, the massive gaping hole that Tyler ripped open when he chose her instead. 

He uses his razor then, wouldn’t be the first time, but his vision is hazy and he almost falls over and he cuts too deep, but as he slides down the wall he can’t bring himself to care. He feels it all now, his vision fading, tears falling and he can feel Tyler’s lips on skin like it’s the first time again.

He wants to find it poetic that Tyler is the one to find him, but it only kills him more. 

“I love you please don’t leave me.” Tyler cries, but Josh is already tuning him out like a car radio moving out of signal. 

“Not enough.” He manages to huff out. Before he’s going limp in Tyler’s arms. 

Josh survives, but at the cost of everything. He gets sent away to get help and it takes him almost a year to be able to see Tyler again. A year of no contact, and pure heartache until he can feel nothing for Tyler in that way anymore. Only then can he see him again, it’s never the same, especially when Jenna hugs him and he feels the bump of her stomach press into him, sees the way she’s positively glowing, and so is Tyler. But now it doesn’t hurt to watch so much, now Josh can see it without flinching like he’s staring at the sun, his eyes don’t burn with tears and he doesn’t feel empty, he feels happy for them, he thinks.


End file.
